The home of Eamon and Nicole Twohig before the city's lead abatement program removed lead paint. / COURTESY PHOTO

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Jake and Rebecca Marin started seeing their house differently after their daughter was born.

They watched her, nervously, as she touched surfaces and put her hands in her mouth in their 100-year-old colonial home in Burlington’s Old North End — which, like approximately 80 percent of the homes in Burlington, contains hazardous lead-based paint.

They knew that lead-based paint creates a fine dust when it’s disturbed, Jake Marin said, so they would try to wash their hands every time they opened a window. They decided to contact the Burlington Lead Program, which is part of the city’s Community and Economic Development Office, for lead abatement.

The Marin family signed up, but other families have not. The city has just one year to reach a goal of making 135 Burlington and Winooski homes lead-safe, but program officials say that many people either don’t know about the program or have not gone through the process to see if they qualify.

The Marins did qualify, and they spent two weeks away from their home this summer while city contractors replaced the windows and painted, cleaned and tested the surfaces in their home.

“There’s a ton of lead still in that house,” Jake Marin said, “but it’s all now theoretically either encased — like protected so you can’t actually get at it because it’s covered in a layer of paint — or it’s been physically removed.”

The program provides lead abatement services for income-qualifying families with young children that live in homes and apartments built before 1978. The income requirement stipulates that a family can make no more than 80 percent of the median income for a given household size, said Brian Pine, assistant director for housing and neighborhood revitalization at the city’s Community and Economic Development Office.

Residents pay nothing toward the project costs, which average about $9,000, if they remain in their homes for five years.

“If it all works out, they’re going to pay 100 percent of the cost, which is amazing,” Jake Marin said of the Burlington program.

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The city has had some challenges, however, in recruiting families to take advantage of those services.

The Burlington Lead Program received a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2011, part of which was expected to be used for lead abatement in 135 homes by Oct. 31, 2014.

Two years into the three-year grant cycle, the program is about halfway to its goal with about 67 or 68 homes participating, Pine said.

Pine said the Department of Housing and Urban Development looks at lead testing and project completion as two benchmarks to evaluate how the grant is being used. Testing is on track, he said, but fewer homes than expected have enrolled.

“I wouldn’t say that the funding is threatened, necessarily, but it does make our application a little less competitive if we are lagging behind,” Pine said.

Pine attributes the low enrollment to a lack of awareness about the program, along with the income requirement and the necessity for homeowners or tenants to vacate the residence while the work is done. He said some people are also simply hesitant about the loan associated with the program — even though it is fully forgiven after five years.

Officials are determined to reach program’s goal over the next year, Pine said.

Lead abatement can make a big difference for young children in old homes, he said, because lead poisoning has been associated with behavior problems, aggression, learning disabilities, developmental delays and more.

Burlington officials had said in 2005 that they hoped to eliminate childhood lead poisoning by 2010, in keeping with a national goal. That was a stretch, Pine said, because the risks of lead-based paint continue for generations.

“You can never erase the impact. What you can do is stop that pathway and put a halt to the continued contribution of lead into the bloodstream,” Pine said. “Once it’s detected, you can keep it from getting worse, but you can’t erase what’s been done.”

The Burlington Lead Program provides free tests for lead dust, which are sent to a lab for analysis. They work to educate the public about the dangers of lead-based paint — most recently, by showing a documentary scheduled for Thursday evening — and talk with people about how to mitigate the risks by cleaning and maintaining their homes properly.

“The only way to combat it is through education and awareness, really,” Pine said. “We can only touch a tip of the iceberg with our money ... We’re trying to target the properties where we’ll have the greatest impact.”

The Burlington Lead Program is similar to a statewide lead program that began in the mid-1990s and also receives federal funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“We’ve generally had a constant stream of applications. We’re able to help pretty much everybody who’s eligible who applies,” said Ron Rupp, director of healthy homes at the Vermont Housing & Conservation Board. He said the program helps about 100-120 houses and apartments each year, and he thinks it has made a difference in lead poisoning in Vermont in concert with educational efforts by the state Department of Health.

Eamon and Nicole Twohig of Burlington enrolled in the Burlington Lead Program last summer after finding out about it online.

“We have a 1910 home, and we knew there was lead everywhere,” Eamon Twohig said. The exterior of their home had old, lead-based paint that was peeling and needed to be refinished, and after they considered hiring someone to do the work, they realized that the lead program would be able to help them to refinish the home safely.

They left town for a week while the interior work was completed and windows were replaced, and the work on the exterior of their home continued into the spring. They had such a positive experience with the program that they spread the word to friends, Eamon Twohig said, and they can now rest in the knowledge that their home is lead-safe.